Water contamination through inadvertent or deliberate activities is a serious threat faced by highly populated cities as well as remote villages around the world. Over the years, technology has evolved to analyze the water quality with high degree of precision in terms of various constituents. Such analytical methods are extensively used in water treatment plants around the world. These analytical methods for water quality monitoring are expensive and require high level of technical skills. They are by design intended to assist the water supplier community in adhering to water quality standards. These methods for water quality monitoring are unreachable to the water user community for being used for monitoring of changes in water quality on a daily basis.
Many of the current approaches for water quality monitoring are tightly coupled with expensive and technically complex analytic methods. Without going through these, users can not even detect changes in water quality. In fact, it is an unnecessary burden on water users. In their day to day life, the primary concern of end users is to ensure that the water quality is not changed over time. If they observe any changes in water quality, they have the immediate option to stop using the water. The cause for these changes in water quality is a secondary concern that the user community can address through existing analytical techniques with the help of the water supplier, water supply regulatory authority or public health authority.
Another major limitation of the current approach for changes in water quality monitoring is that the process is implemented in isolation with little or no opportunity for sharing the information. Water contamination is a global phenomenon. Users in different parts of the world encounter similar contamination threats to their water resources. Sharing information on changes in water quality around the world will help users and suppliers for early detection of water quality threats, for identifying optimal solutions and to alert authorities on potentially dangerous situation even before they become reality based on lessons learned from other parts of the world.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,454,295 B2, describes an anti-terrorism water quality monitoring system. This invention combined traditional analytical or electronic monitoring system with a database for storing the data, analyzing module to analyze the result, a computer server and network connectivity to alert authorities if any anomalies are reported. This system could provide the water supplier with better storage, analysis and warning mechanism. But the user community has no direct access to the data collected and stored for immediate decision making in their daily life.
US 2012/0057781 A1 describes another invention for water quality testing using a cell phone application, mirror and plastic bag. This invention could provide individual members of water user community to monitor changes in water quality. However it does not provide any means of sharing the information among the community members.
To bring the water quality monitoring system accessible to the water user community some of the limitations identified above are to be removed. The water quality monitoring system should be affordable and scalable according to the budget available. The storage distribution and archival of the data collected should also be inexpensive and affordable. The collected data should freely be available for the stakeholder community. Steps must be in place for instant notification of the stakeholders if and when changes in water quality are detected. The stakeholder community must be provided with a means of communication to share relevant information on data they collected, contributed or analyzed. Current invention is an attempt to resolve the limitations identified above to provide a Water Weather Station that can detect the changes in water quality and is affordable, scalable and accessible to stakeholders around the world.